Luna Lee

Avi Patel (10) [left] and Sanchay Koppa (11) [right] adjust the voltage of their hovercraft, Feb. 28. Koppa and Patel won fifth place in the hovercraft event.

Oliver Wang (9) pressed the start button with the eraser tip of his pencil, releasing his and Mihir Konkapaka’s (10) electric vehicle into motion. A moment later, when it swerved between the two cans set up in the middle of the track, Wang and Konkapaka let out the breath they had been holding the whole time. Soon thereafter, the vehicle came to a stop in nearly perfect position, just 3.5 centimeters away from the target point. After many trials and errors and a failed first attempt, this second run at the San Diego Science Olympiad Regional Tournament Electric Vehicle (EV) event earned the two students a first-place medal, Feb. 28.

“Electric Vehicle had a few hiccups before in Invitationals,” Wang said. “We’ve always had some unfortunate thing happen to us, and the low placements in past Invitationals were really discouraging. I was really nervous going into EV because I spent so much time preparing for this. I didn’t want anything to go wrong. On the first run, we hit the outer can, which is not good. But afterwards, we had a pretty good run, so I was really happy when it went well.”

As a team, Westview Science Olympiad placed third overall at the tournament out of 62 teams. They also received at least one medal in all 23 events at the competition—the first time Westview has ever achieved this. Westview and the other top six schools from each region will advance to the State Tournament in April.

Wang, who competed in three events, EV, Engineering CAD, and Robot Tour, also earned first place in Engineering CAD with Lylia Zheng (10). A recent addition to Science Olympiad events, Engineering CAD is a study event where students take an exam involving design and problem-solving. Wang said he had more confidence going into this event than in his others even though this was his first high school tournament.

“Engineering CAD was actually one of my favorite events,” Wang said. “It’s also a relatively new event, so I feel like it’s less competitive. It was easier to medal in than [in] other events that have been around longer. I felt pretty confident about it because I’ve done this event several times before, even before it was an actual event, since I did it as a trial in middle school. I knew how it was going to work, and I was not worried at all.”

Science Olympiad President Kaden Chang (12) said he was glad to see the improvements the team has gone through over the past seasons.

“Our Team 2 and Team 3 did a lot better compared to last year,” Chang said. “There were a lot of people who medaled in events, and we did a lot better than last year with the same number of schools [competing]. Some people, during awards, were surprised because they did way better than they thought. I felt really proud of

them and happy for them.”

He said there was still a lot to be learned from this experience.

“Our study events were pretty good this time around, but the build events will definitely improve at States,” he said. “Regionals taught us what mistakes we don’t want to make, and showed that we could have been more [prepared] for it.”

One example of a mishap was in an event called Bungee Drop, which Chang participated in with Adrienne He (9).

“For Bungee Drop, I was pretty confident going into it,” Chang said. “Our team that went first did pretty [well], and ended up getting 10th place. But for my team, we didn’t do as well because our bottle hit a ledge before it dropped. They didn’t let us redo it because of the rules, and we also tried to appeal for it but it wasn’t accepted. But, we learned to make sure to drop it slowly next time. It was a valuable lesson.”

Sanchay Koppa (11), the vice president of Operations, faced similar challenges in one of his events with Wang: Robot Tour. In this event, students create a set of codes and a physical robot model to travel successfully through a map given the day of the competition. Koppa said the mishap disappointed him since the Robot Tour was the event that he spent the most time on.

“In hindsight, it is a very silly mistake,” Koppa said. “But I suppose during the stress of the competition, I misplaced a battery, and that caused one of the polarities of the battery to be canceled. So instead of outputting 12 volts, it outputted 9 volts.”

Although the critical error made the robot malfunction, Koppa and Wang still ended up placing 12th for the event.

“I’m happy to have at least placed in spite of the challenges I faced, but I will say that it was quite annoying and honestly upsetting to see so much time and effort not be as fruitful as I hoped it would have been,” Koppa said. “Especially because it is such a minor issue. If the motor just stopped working, if the track wasn’t laid out properly, or if it was a bad testing environment, those are more plausible and reasonable issues we could face. But something like putting a battery in wrong is such a silly mistake, and those are the mistakes that hurt the most because you know that you could have easily prevented it.”

However, Koppa said the mistake also served as a reminder of the potential his build has.

“Next time, I will definitely remember to put in the batteries properly,” Koppa said. “But also I realized that I really only messed up on that one little thing. Everything else went well. I actually ran the same test at home, and it worked out perfectly fine. I know that all the difficult places where it can go wrong worked fine for this Regional. Then I know for the next competition at States, all I have to do is just tone a little more [to fix] the easy mistakes. It’s a bit relieving to know that I can do better. I am glad that I had this experience so that I’m much better prepared for States.”

Koppa said this tournament helped him gauge how far he has come since the beginning of the year.

“A lot of my events, regardless of the results, had big improvements from every single Invitational that we’ve done,” Koppa said. “It was nice for me to actually be able to test out what I’ve been working on for so many hours, days, and nights. To finally have it work in action, even if it wasn’t at full capacity, was definitely rewarding.”